


Watch over you

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Bunker Fic, Fallen Castiel, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Men of Letters Headquarters, Season/Series 08 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-05
Updated: 2013-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-25 17:51:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/955973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel finally makes his way back to the Winchesters, and adjusts to his new life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Reunion

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic so I really hope you like it. Also entirely un-beta'd so please feel free to criticise! This was supposed to be a fluffy oneshot but I had too much to say, so it might take a few chapters! Please tell me what you think!

‘Sammy!’ It was the urgency in Dean’s voice, rather than the volume, that awoke Sam. He knew that, concerned with his brother’s recovery as Dean was, whatever warranted being woken at one in the morning would have to be pretty damn important. His hair decidedly bed-heady, sleep clogging his eyes, he stumbled down the hall to the bunker’s entrance where he saw…  
  
‘Cas?’ There, in the doorway slumped the angel, Dean desperately attempting to hold him upright. A sweater-clad arm was round Dean’s neck- what had happened to the trench coat?- and Dean’s arm clutched hopelessly round his only friend’s waist, who appeared to have not-long-since passed out and turned into a dead weight. Sam rushed to the other side, shoulder under Cas’ other arm, and the brothers carried him to the couch a few feet away. He lay there, eyes closed and lids fluttering.  
  
Dean looked meaningfully at his brother and gestured into the kitchen. Quietly they left the angel to sleep as they had a whispered conversation in the next room.  
  
‘What the fuck man?’  
  
‘Dean-?‘  
  
‘we’ve been looking for the guy for what, weeks? How did he get here? What’s happened to him?’  
  
‘I don’t know,’  
  
‘Is he-?’ Dean couldn’t finish the question. It was too painful to think about. Sam, however, knew what he was thinking. He peered through the doorway at the dark haired man.  
  
‘Angels don’t sleep, Dean.’ By this point Sam‘s breath was becoming heavy, as if with exertion, and he unconsciously massaged a temple. It was upon his poor attempt at concealing a yawn that he was sent to bed.  
  
‘Thanks Sammy, but go back to sleep! I can keep an eye on Cas. Looks like he’ll be out for a while anyway, no use us both staying up.’ Sam didn’t put up much of a fight, even for politeness’ sake. Know his brother as he did, Dean wanted to be alone.  
  
As Sam’s door closed behind him, Dean grabbed a bottle of whisky and glass tumbler from the kitchen before returning to the main room. His thoughts felt very loud as he sat on the chair facing his angel. Though he knew, intellectually, that Cas was no longer ‘Castiel, Angel Of The Lord’, he would always be Dean’s angel. It made a nice change, he thought, as he drained his glass, that it was now his job to do the watching-over. He used to act as if it annoyed him, Cas not getting the personal space thing, ‘watching over’ Dean while he slept, but he never minded as much as he pretended to. It was nice, really. He had always, since he could remember, slept fully clothed, weapon under the pillow, ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice. When his angel had been there, that instinct had lessened, sleep had been deeper.  
  
Cas seemed, at this moment, quite unable of springing into anything resembling action, so it was only right he had someone to watch over him, Dean reasoned, conveniently forgetting that the bunker was so safe he had finally been removing pants and shirt to sleep. He stared at the man, as if he could in a few minutes make up for two weeks of absence. They’d looked for him, of course, Sam doing the computer-geek thing from his sickbed, and Dean driving after any leads. He’d tried not to think that, if he’d fallen with the other angels, he could have landed anywhere in the world. One night he had awoken in a cold sweat with the realisation that 70% of the world was covered in water. Since then he had avoided sleeping long enough to dream, avoiding nightmares of a small, tired Cas drowning at sea. Cas right now, Dean thought, looked as small as he had in these nightmares, as weak. He closed his eyes and remembered the first time he had met the angel, how powerful and terrifying he had been. This Cas had stubble like that of purgatory, he’d lost the trench coat and replaced it with a filthy blue hoody, and was clutching the cuffs in his hands as if he were cold. There were dark shadows under his eyes and his hair looked prehistoric. Dean finished another glass, put the bottle down, and resumed his watch.  
  
It was only perhaps an hour later that the other man stirred slightly, and then woke with a start. Dean rushed over, any thoughts of personal space forgotten as he knelt by the couch.  
  
‘Cas? Cas, buddy…’ the blue eyes opened, unfocused, and took in various facets of the room. Eventually they fell on the hunter's face, inches from his.  
  
‘Dean.’


	2. Healing

‘Dean.’ 

The voice was as he’d always remembered it, almost a growl in its intensity, yet had something extra. A sadness, a desperation.

‘How’re you feeling buddy?’ Dean winced at his own words. How did he think Cas was feeling? The blue eyes hadn’t moved from his face, and didn’t seem annoyed by the question.

‘I… I feel… hungry.’ He looked almost surprised at the words. Dean, however, grinned. Care about his angel as he might, he was still not good at the emotional stuff. Hunger, however…

‘Well that we can do something about. Do you wanna help me make burgers? When did you last eat anyway?’

‘I would greatly enjoy helping,’ Cas said earnestly, and his eyes crinkled in a genuine smile as he stood upright, wincing slightly. The fact he ignored the latter question did not go unnoticed by Dean, nor did the wince. 

-

‘Are you too hungry to take a shower first? Food’ll taste better when you’re clean, seriously.’ The newly human man stared down at himself, grubby blue hoody covering his old ‘tax accountant’ shirt and backwards tie; the shirt nearly grey and tie besmirched by a stain on the collar that looked suspiciously like blood. There was dirt under his fingernails. Honestly, he thought, he shouldn’t be helping cook anything in this state, and so shook his head,

‘No, a shower would be appropriate. Where-?’

He followed Dean down the hall, thankful his friend was not expecting him to talk much. ‘I’ll just get a change of clothes for when you’re done and then I’ll show you how the shower works.’ He left Cas in the bathroom and disappeared back into the hallway. Cas started to undress. He knew a little about human modesty, enough to know what was inappropriate, but since Dean had pointed out the state of his clothing he felt eager to remove as much as he could, immediately. The faded hoody was in a pile on the floor, and he was unbuttoning his shirt as his friend reentered the room. Dean’s eyes, just as green as he had remembered in the weeks spent trying to find him, swept over his torso. At first there was a look Cas could not identify, something wistful perhaps, and the hunter seemed unable to speak, but it was quickly replaced with a concern.

‘Cas? What the hell happened to you?’ Dean gestured to the exposed, bruised, skin. He started forward, as if to remove the shirt completely, but thought better of it. Cas tried to reclothe his torso, but it was too late.

‘I’m… not my brothers’ favourite person right now.’ He looked cautiously at the taller man, who placed the clean clothes he was carrying carefully next to the sink, and walked over to him.

‘Let me take a look, okay?’

Cas nodded, and shrugged the shirt from his shoulders. He felt Dean’s fingers on the muscles of his back and tried not to cry out. There was pain, yes, but something else. Contact felt different now he was human (as he had learned about pain already), and he suddenly understood the motivations of Dean’s attempted hug in purgatory. He suddenly wished he had reciprocated.

‘Hey man, we need to get you clean, and then I’ll dress these injuries. Reckon you can shower by yourself?’

Again, he nodded, and Dean showed him how to get the water to the right temperature, followed by a quick summary of how soap and shampoo worked. The hunter left quickly after that, giving Cas a final strange look before departing the room.

-

Dean shook his head, trying to clear it, as he walked away from the closed door, behind which he knew his angel was undressed and showering. It was weird, he thought to himself, all those years of seeing the nerdy dude in his trenchcoat getup, he never gave much thought to what was underneath it. He’d been surprised by the muscletone, somehow expecting him to be scrawny. He certainly wasn’t.

Okay, if he was honest about it (which he rarely was, though drink on occasion helped), these weren’t thoughts he’d never had before. He and Cas were close, everyone knew it. Even Cas had talked about their ‘profound bond’. But freaking hell, the guy was an _angel_ , Dean told himself, there was no way these thoughts could be reciprocated. And now, when his friend really needed to be taken care of for once, was not the time to be thinking about it anyway. He grabbed the whisky from where he’d left it by the chair, and went to get the first aid kit.

Some minutes later he heard the shower stop, and a slightly damp, but clean Cas entered the room. His hair looked as if he’d rubbed it aggressively with the towel, messy and at odd angles, slightly fluffy on one side, and Dean’s clothes were slightly too big for him. The sweat pants rested lower on his hips than was respectable, showing an inch of midriff and the angel stretched upward and trailing beneath his toes on the floor, while the Metallica tee hung loose and off-centre around the neck, revealing clavicle and a single collarbone.

Dean blinked for slightly longer than necessary as he realised he had been staring, and the former angel squinted at him, a familiar expression on Cas’ features. He tried to think purely platonic thoughts as he gestured to the first aid kit. ‘We need to clean some of those injuries a bit better, man,’ he held out the bottle, ‘it’s gonna sting like hell, you’ll want some of this.’

The angel took it, though didn’t drink any, and allowed Dean to steer him onto one of the tall stools by the kitchen counter. The Metallica tee was shortly removed, and Dean was applying alcohol to a piece of gauze.

‘Dude, drink. Trust me,’

‘It smells unpleasant,’ Cas retorted matter-of –factly, grimacing into the neck of the bottle.

Dean laughed at this, and smiled perhaps more genuinely than the angel’s words warranted. He quickly put his face into neutral. ‘You’ve drank before? A liquor store! Remember?’

‘I was not human then. The taste and scent were incidental.’

‘You’re gonna want to get over that. Trust me.’

-

Castiel did trust Dean. He trusted his friend, so he screwed up his face and took a big swig, downed as much as he could without letting himself taste it. It still made his mouth and throat sting. Looking up at Dean he saw the man was smiling at him, almost proud. Cas smiled back, grateful after so much pain to be a cause of any happiness. He made a mental note, to file with many others about the hunter, the righteous man, that Dean was impressed by feats of alcoholism.

‘Ha ha! Knew you could handle it with the best of ‘em! Ready?’

‘Ready.’ He truly believed it was, but still shouted out as the wet cloth touched a gash on his shoulder.

‘Sorry man. Now you’re human we’ve gotta make sure these don’t get infected.’

Cas nodded, teeth clenched against the pain and so unable to speak. He felt foolish for yelling, foolish for not being able to heal himself. The irony of their reversed positions was not lost on him. However, still, underneath the pain he felt something else with Dean’s touch. The fingers were gentle as they moved from injury to injury, and the hunter’s green eyes stayed locked with his whenever he wasn’t concentrating on the task, always making sure Cas was okay.

‘Any bruises on your legs Cas?

‘I believe so.’ He pulled down the sweat pants, grateful Dean had the foresight to lend him boxers in addition to pants and shirt, and watched as the hunter cleaned a particularly nasty injury on his right thigh.

‘Well, I’d say you’re as patched up as I can do. How’s it feel?’

Castiel thought for a few seconds before answering. ‘Painful. But, better.’

‘Great!’ Dean’s eyes seemed to brighten at this, slightly fewer worry lines around them. ‘Still hungry?’


End file.
